Data Delights

Dispatches from a Data Science course

Prof. Brittney E. Bailey and her Data Science students

Fall 2021

As the semester comes to a close, we are delighted to share some data-driven discoveries from the Fall 2021 sections of Data Science at Amherst College!

Scroll down to explore the students’ blog posts or use the navigation bar on the side to jump to a particular group!

Blog Posts

The Purple Tusks: The National Struggle for our Wellbeing During a Global Pandemic

As COVID uprooted every aspect of our lives and put us into isolation, the importance of mental health has been recognized more and more. The initial wave of COVID was filled with fear, confusion, loneliness and many other unexpected emotions. Debates over government response became more and more partisan as the pandemic started becoming the new normal.

Revisiting 2020: Revisiting 2020

2020 was a hectic year. Looking back, specifically at the election, our project group wanted to better understand which events, trends, and other factors had the greatest impact on the U.S.’s Presidential Election. To examine these factors, we looked at a wide range of datasets in order to gain the broadest possible view of issues relevant to the American electorate during 2020. In addition to election forecasting data from FiveThirtyEight, we used data from Johns Hopkins University on the COVID…

Data Ballers: A Deep Dive into the Changed NBA

As passionate NBA fans, we spend much of our free time watching and discussing basketball. Thus, when presented with the opportunity to apply data analysis to a real-world context, we focused on the NBA. Our goal: understand the modern NBA. In particular, we concentrated on comparisons, as we believe that data analysis serves as a powerful tool for quantifying and visualizing the game of basketball. We hope our blog will be helpful for both casual and diehard NBA fans, as well as those with even…

Los Hermanos Intermareales: Beaches in Galicia

Our blog is intended to inform users about the sediment nutrients, algal cover, fauna diversity, and locations of eight different sites in Galicia, Spain: Playa America, Carnota, Corrubedo, Barra, Nerga, Lanzada, and Samil. Our blog is centered around a shiny app that includes five different visualizations of beach characteristic variance. All of the visualizations have interactive widgets that allow users to compare different sites, treatments, and nutrient levels, as well as allowing users to …

AAA: US Health Care Equity

Everyone deserves access to quality health care. However, this is not a reality in the United States. There are systemic health inequities, and the marginalized populations suffer the consequences. To examine this issue, we focus our BLOG on regional health insurance coverage status, the role of intersectionality in health disparities, and people’s experiences with public insurance.

Facts And Stats: Incarceration Rates in America

Mass incarceration in the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon. As documented in books such as The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and documentaries such as “13th”, mass incarceration is the latest iteration of American society’s efforts to keep Black Americans, as well as other non-white racial and ethnic groups, in second-class citizenship status.

Data Chi Fraternity: The Playing Field of Higher Education

The world of higher education is difficult to distill. From the skewed dynamics of the college admission process to the infinite variations of the student experience to ultimate post-graduation outcomes, there is not just one thread that can fully tell the story of the college sphere. As college students with graduation on the horizon, we have taken the opportunity to visualize just some of the many forces of higher education.

The Hogwarts Hammers: Suicide Rates Across the World

Suicide is consistently one of the leading causes of death in the world with close to one million people dying by suicide each year (Source: World Health Organization). In fact, in the US alone, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 10 and 34. (Source: National Institute of Health) As you can see from the plot below, the issue has only been getting worse for the last 20 years. Suicide is an incredibly complex issue with many contributing factors.

giRlbosses: Sustainability on College Campuses across the US

As an extension of our Shiny project, our project investigates how Amherst College embodies sustainability and visualizes the trajectory of sustainability principles across higher education in the US. We specifically examined Amherst’s expressed sentiment and relative performance to understand how our college prioritizes sustainability, and to hold our casmpus accountable for its actions. We hope to ultimately share our blog with Amherst’s incoming director of sustainability to highlight regions…

Shiny Sea Turtles: Netflix

Entertainment plays an important role in every human society, across time periods and across geographical locations. From the micro to the macro level, each individual is trying to find a new and better way to keep themselves engaged. One of the most prominent forms of entertainment in our recent history is cinema, a multifaceted tool for both those seeking intellectual stimulation and those hoping to unwind and power down. In the past few decades, we have observed a gradual transition from goin…

Five Chives: Environmental and Sociodemographic Determinants of Mortality in the US

In order to analyze environmental and sociodemographic factors related to mortality rates, we used data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC). [[ADD MORE HERE]]

Data Diggers: Kickstarter

Kickstarter, founded in 2009, is an online crowdfunding platform. Their mission is to help “bring creative projects to life” (Kickstarter, 2009) as individuals can create projects that draw others to support the process.

Resources